Katz campaign accuses Caban’s lawyer of suppressing black vote as the two sides battle over the final ballot count in Queens DA primary

FILE - In this Thursday, June 13 file photo, public defender Tiffany Caban, right, listens as Queens Borough President Melinda Katz speaks during a Queens District Attorney candidates' forum at St. John's University in New York. (Mary Altaffer/AP)

Melinda Katz’s campaign for Queens district attorney accused rival Tiffany Cabán’s lawyer of disenfranchising black voters as the two sides battled to validate — or disqualify — thousands of ballots that will determine the outcome of the close Democratic primary.

The accusation was hurled just a few hours into the Board of Election’s count of roughly 6,000 paper ballots on Wednesday, a week after Cabán declared victory over the Queens Democratic machine and its handpicked candidate, Borough President Katz.

Cabán had a 1,119 vote lead over Katz as of Tuesday, but the BOE could only start counting 3,352 paper military and absentee ballots on Wednesday morning. Another 2,816 affidavit ballots were uncounted as of Tuesday, but only 487 were considered valid on a preliminary basis by the afternoon.

Some of those affidavit ballots are from voters who hadn't updated their registration after moving to Queens from within New York state and outside the city. A new state law mandates that those are valid primary voters.

The BOE expects to finish tallying the paper ballots either Wednesday night or Friday when the count resumes after the July 4 holiday. An automatic recount would occur only if there’s a margin of victory of less than half a percent once all the paper ballots are tallied.

The Katz campaign said the manual recount would be triggered if the final margin is less than 450 votes.

The Cabán and Katz campaigns carefully tracked the changing margins as the day went on.

A group of 16 bipartisan BOE staffers worked face to face in a conference room at the board’s Queens office, opening the ballots before unfolding them and showing them to Cabán and Katz campaign reps. Attorneys from the campaigns watching the count also stalked around the room, giving BOE staffers their two cents.

Tempers flared when the Cabán campaign started challenging ballots a few hours after the count was underway — arguing one in a Katz-friendly district wasn’t dated and another because the signature didn’t match.

Goldfeder said the undated and sealed ballot was "objectionable" — prompting a spat with Katz lawyer Frank Bolz.

Even before the BOE began sorting the paper ballots, the Cabán campaign filed a pre-emptive lawsuit meant to stop the Queens Democratic machine from messing with the count.

Cabán’s campaign described the lawsuit filed in Supreme Court on Tuesday as a standard measure to ensure the campaign has a legal out if there are any irregularities after the BOE, stacked with party appointees, finishes counting the paper ballots.

“We fully expect that once every valid vote is counted, Tiffany Cabán’s insurgent campaign will remain victorious,” campaign spokeswoman Monica Klein said. “But in case there are any irregularities at the Party-controlled Board, we are ready to take this to the courts to ensure there are no issues.”